


young in limbs, in judgement old

by xiuzhe (orphan_account)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:29:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22064803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/xiuzhe
Summary: Such a small, petty thing, a name.
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Sapphire
Kudos: 22
Collections: Porn Battle XV (The Ides of Porn)





	young in limbs, in judgement old

Such a small, petty thing, a name.

Sapphire knows why the Dragonborn asks for another name after the first has been given, just as she knows why all others prior have discarded it. Nords are not known to name their children after stones, so a Nord who hails by the call of a gem is a suspicious one no matter the truth of their nature. It is not this knowing part of her that sparks the fury choking her chest at this woman, this bright and high stranger so disused to clawing through the Ratways that she would look down upon Sapphire for such necessary deceptions, nor is it this knowing part that coils around Sapphire's tongue and lashes it in anger in retort.

Before she can take a second to breathe out or allow the apology so apparent behind the Dragonborn's teeth to burden her, Sapphire pulls her own story from her throat like a hot knife, thrusting it outward. It is no hard task – she wakes up to the touch of long dried blood hot and slick on her hands and sees the faces of long dead men on her closed eyelids and it no longer hurts her, not like it used to. If she must be so burdened by its weight atop everything else she carries, why not use it as a tool, too?

Hers is no unique story, but one so often told through many tellers with many names that it is a trying one to hear as much as it is a trying one to tell, and she expects – something. For the Dragonborn to walk away mid-word at best, perhaps, but this is not what she is given. Instead, the Dragonborn listens to the tale that Sapphire bites out at her and then is quiet, for a long pause after, neither irritated nor pitying, neither meeting her eyes nor avoiding them. For the first time in such a long, long time, Sapphire feels scalded by shame where she's come to know only emptiness.

“You never did say your name,” the Dragonborn remarks, at last. Sapphire cannot find anything to take from it but a gentleness offered that makes her shame sharpen.

“Not today,” she replies.

For now, that is that.

* * *

Their meeting comes to hang on Sapphire as time passes, her story remaining the most words shared between them at a time, ever heavier.

She can hardly stand it, between the brunt of their few and far meetings and her own bewilderment that she suddenly wants so much for another's company. It is not as if they don't speak, it is that they don’t speak _enough_ , well-wishes and congratulations for jobs come to pass too little and too shallow to satisfy. Many a time Sapphire must stop herself from wandering when she knows the Dragonborn sleeps in the Cistern, and that alone frustrates, both that she is so weak to that kind of foolishness and that she is so unwise to not know why she acts as she does.

Mercer Frey's betrayal inadvertently saves her from much of herself, in that regard. Whether her complacency has begotten her loyalty or the opposite matters none beyond that it leads her to remain within the Ratways, to stay with the guild even in pennilessness. She marvels, almost, at the person she has come to be now that she can even achieve such selflessness.

Then the Dragonborn returns, bathed in Nocturne's black and bringing with her the long thought dead, and suddenly this new world she finds herself in makes more sense. That the Daedric princes were real and would act through mortal agents was of no shock to her, not after the Brotherhood, but their gifts never did come freely, their asking prices always steep. The Dragonborn could die. That was an actuality she's hardly had to entertain until now, before Mercer's treachery and Nocturne's deific retribution. 

The Dragonborn could die and leave her without balm for this plaguing unsurety. Sapphire is not certain she will live through that should it come to bear fruit.

By the time she can catch the Dragonborn's wrist and pull her away, deep into the belly of the gutted vault to shy from even the sharpest ears and eyes amongst them, Sapphire is such a mess of thoughts strung upon thoughts that she can't even speak, only pant and clench her hands. The Dragonborn merely binds their fingers together and raises them to their chests in answer. They are so close, suddenly, despite the breadth of the room, hardly a breath of space between them, and yet it calms her to be trapped this way, between the bricks and the Dragonborn's body, impossibly broad up close. The panic she feels is terrifying – she thought she had been done with loss, that the steel she grew over her skin and her heart would continue to save her. She has survived up until this much. At last, she may be breaking.

There are so many things to say, but none of them come out, only “Tell me your name.” Sapphire wants to bite down on her tongue and choke on it because it's the most unimportant of them all. The Dragonborn squeezes her fingers against the backs of Sapphire's hands, and she is tall enough that Sapphire has to tilt her face to see her mouth, watch her lips pull into a smile.

“Not today,” says the Dragonborn, giving back the words Sapphire had given her once before. They are different now, though, not a promise of a secret later shared, but an apology for lacking an answer to a question asked. Sapphire frowns, the expression holding until she looks up further, eyes skating over bottom edge of a thick pale slash ripping across the Dragonborn's dark skin at her right temple. It tangles upward like a gnarled vine, thick black hair parting for its passage. Sapphire has heard before of people taking strikes to the head and coming back from them without themselves, entire lives lost in a second of clumsiness or violence, and she understands at once what the Dragonborn has left unsaid. She wants to reach out and follow it with her fingers, but that would mean forsaking the clasp of their hands, the damp sweat rubbing between their palms, so she only fixes their gazes together.

“I expect it when you return.” It's a demand and it's a prayer, as though wanting it and wishing for it fiercely enough will make it so. The Dragonborn does not laugh, does not promise, only holds on. Her body sways forward, lips touching Sapphire's forehead, too tightly wanting and worshipful to be a mistake.

They both move all at once, grasps unravelling as the Dragonborn tries to break away and Sapphire surges after her. Her hands snatch her arm, her hip, her mouth snaring her jaw, the kiss more an exclamation of air, a reflex to the upheaval of their bodies. The Dragonborn stills obediently, immediately, but it is minutes before Sapphire feels the tension under her hands ebb out, and minutes still before she is brave enough to press their mouths together properly, emboldened when the Dragonborn meets her half way, when she takes Sapphire's bottom lip into her teeth.

The Dragonborn's task is too immediate for Sapphire to ask her to her bed, but if this is to be it, if her skill and Nocturne's gifts and Sapphire's pleas aren't to be enough, she will at least have something to keep for it. Nocturne's garments give way like any layman's leatherwork when Sapphire sets her hands to them, and Sapphire has her neck bowed to kiss the rise of a breast before the Dragonborn sheds her shyness, palms smoothing down Sapphire's sides, coming to fists at her hips. They twitch when her mouth goes lower and her hands lower still, tongue laving a nipple as her thumb parts the folds of her cunt, and slide to her belt. They stop only when Sapphire stops them, her free hand coming to the Dragonborn's wrist.

“Just let me touch you,” Sapphire says, because she is still so very selfish after all. The Dragonborn sighs out as though she is suffering, but she lifts her hands back, bracing herself on the wall. Sapphire smiles, feeling oddly as freed by the Dragonborn's acquiescence as she does trapped by it, and set to licking into the woman's mouth to chase those thoughts away. Her thumb roughly circles at her clit, easing attention away from the first press of her finger inside, not nearly wet enough to not catch at each knuckle as the Dragonborn pants and hiccups into her teeth. 

Too much thinking and she'll be unable to preserve this, clear as glass for her memories and her dreams to turn over and over again until maybe she sees the Dragonborn's flushed and slackened face on the backs of her eyelids instead. Until maybe she wakes up each morning with the ghost of her heat and slickness cloying her fingers. Until maybe she is lulled to sleep all over again by these shaky breaths and bitten off whimpers.

The second finger slips in easier than the first, yet Sapphire doesn't dare a third, the way too dry for it to be too pleasurable. It seems to be enough, the Dragonborn rocking down on her, quickening and unsteady, forearms grazing the walls as she slumps closer. 

It's quiet, so quiet save for the twine of their breathing that Sapphire doesn't even notice when the Dragonborn comes, not until there's a thumb massaging her wrist and her fingers are slipping out. The Dragonborn lifts her chin and rubs away the spit that has collected there, beaded from the snapped cord between their mouths, and Sapphire rasps out a breath, wordless.

The despair crashes down on her all at once, and Sapphire can barely murmur out her surprise as her voice cracks around it and she feels her face go hot. She is rescued from her own weakness by the Dragonborn pressing her face into her neck, fingers cupping her nape, and Sapphire presses up, leans until her mouth is close enough to the Dragonborn's ear that she can trust her voice to carry her message.

Just one thing. A small, petty thing.

“Tuktu ansei,” is what the Dragonborn whispers into her hair in return.

Sapphire doesn't understand what it means, but she knows she doesn't have to; not when its utterance, like a charm, is meaning enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2014 for the prompt _F!Dragonborn/Sapphire, confide, slow_. This reupload is an edited version of the original comment fic.


End file.
